


Aquamarine: SEASON 1

by drcrack (peccadilloes)



Category: Siren (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Crack, Fake Character Death, Gen, Government Conspiracy, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-07
Updated: 2018-06-17
Packaged: 2019-05-19 07:05:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14869022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peccadilloes/pseuds/drcrack
Summary: After a while it became apparent that circumstances had changed.





	1. Mermaid Town

**Author's Note:**

> for Sarinah!
> 
> I am really not prepared for Season 2 at all.

Maddie put the mermaid sisters statuette back down on the shelf.  _Which one of you is Ryn_ , she thought deeply. Then, suddenly,  _Which one of you is Donna?_

Maddie looked at Helen. "Ever since Donna got here, I just -- feel this sensation, this pull toward her."

"And not toward Ryn?" Helen said mischievously.

Maddie shook her head. "It's not like that."

"Did she sing to you?"

Maddie opened her mouth to speak.

The door chimes jangled. Ryn walked abruptly into the shop and approached them. "Ben said--"

Maddie glanced at Helen then reached out to Ryn and cupped her cheek. "Ryn, we have reason to believe that Donna and Decker faked their own deaths."

Ryn grasped Maddie. "Sister is alive?!"

"We think so," Maddie said carefully, "but we're not sure."

"Maddie will take Ryn to sister."

Maddie glanced at Helen again. "We'll try," she said, still looking at Helen. "But first, we have to talk."

"Trust," Ryn said.

"Trust," said Maddie.

Helen closed the shop and opened the door to her apartment. She winked at Ryn. "I have some fish in the refrigerator."  

Ryn's posture shifted and her gaze sharpened. She inhaled loudly through her nose. "Okay," she said. "Ryn will eat. And then we go find sister."

 


	2. Diner Time

Xander thought maybe he should lay off trying to convince Maddie to go to college, but still--she was the smartest person he knew.

"Why are you staying here?" he said. They were standing outside Maddie's dad's apartment, or Xander's dad's boat, or leaning against the car that belonged to Janine's step-mom. Maddie always said the same thing with her body language, and she looked really sad. Xander sat back in the booth and shook his head. 

"Maddie, no matter what you do or how much Ben's mom likes you, it's still his family's name and wealth in this town. You and I--we can never be fully ourselves here. We're only whoever we are in relation to Ben--just like it's always been for our dads. No, wait, Maddie, listen, the only way we're going to ever get to know who we really are is if we leave this place. Move to a city, Seattle--"

"Xander if you just want to move back to Boston, no one will blame you."

Xander let out an exasperated sigh. Maddie shifted in her seat. A waitress came by and poured more coffee.

"I know it sounds crazy, but Ryn and Donna--"

"My mermaid--"

"Yes, but she's not your mermaid, she's more like a person."

Xander shook his head again, unbelieving. Seals and dolphins and whales and sharks were smart and octopuses were probably the descendants of accidental aliens. But mermaids?

"Maddie, what's with the voice?"

"What?" She dipped around in her egg with a piece of French toast.

 "The creepy voice."

"The singing?"

"Yeah, what the fuck is that?"

Maddie stifled a laugh.

"It sounds like weird cartoon Enya, right?" 

Maddie nodded, grinned. "Like your mom always used to play that one Enya CD when she picked us up from school..."

Xander tore off a piece of French toast and nommed on it. Maddie doused the plate with more syrup. Xander could feel himself smiling. What had happened to their friendship since she and Ben started dating? When Xander came back from college in Boston it was like this whole other thing. Maddie didn't want to spend time alone any more. If she came over for dinner with his parens, Ben was there, too. When Xander asked Dale about it, he'd looked resigned.  _You know it's been really hard on Maddie these past few years with her mom_. 

"Xander," Maddie said, "Do you have any cash for a tip?"

Xander reached into his pocket and took out his wallet. 

Maddie was showing him the check. "Not bad, just like ten dollars each."

"I've got four ones," Xander said. 

"Anyway, I was going to say--that's why I need your help. To get Ryn and Donna and Decker out of here, and the other mermaids--someplace safe. Some place that has food, that the military can't find them."

"The military founds Chris," Xander said.

" _Decker_ found Chris," Maddie said. She stood up and went to go pay the bill.

Xander set his cash on the table and slid out of the booth.


	3. Bed Spread

"Ah yes, where were we?" Helen said. She licked her finger and paged through one of the many mermaid history disguised as legends books she kept in her bedroom near her bedside, so that no one would suspect her of being one eighth of a sixteenth mermaid -- the last of her line or whatever eugenicist-ical hoohah it was yes really going there too, like it's not a metaphor if it's really a thing that happens. The entire inside of Helen's being was like  _ugh_. Donna--

Donna shifted her head in Helen's lap, and Decker leaned closer. On her bed, where they all were. Decker's weight shifting the mattress, his hands respectfully to himself and yet his heart's yearning calling out  _sing to me please sing to me please please please_

"Um," Decker said. 

The image in the book was graphic. Donna touched it. "We attack the humans."

"But we--the humans started it," Decker said.

"They always do." Helen said wryly. 


	4. never will it be the same

"Overwrought and impossible," Xander was saying. "You can't fake stab my dad through his entire chest and then throw him overboard--Why does my dad even need to be on the boat?"

"Ben will believe," Ryn said. 

"Here we go again with Ben."

"Xander--" It was Maddie. She reached out to touch his arm but didn't.

Xander looked at the sky and exhaled, loudly. "Fine, okay? Fine." He stormed off into the boat. Then turned around and yelled "But leave Calvin out of it!"

"Leave me out of what?" Calvin said. He was holding Chris's box of Cap'n Crunch. 

"All this mermaid shit, man. I just don't want you and Janine--look you...'re trying to start something and I just want you to have the chance to get it right."

"I miss Chris," Calvin said. "The way he was before the accident--He got spooked, man. He got spooked."

"I know, man. I miss him, too."

*

Afterward after all that, after Xander's dad left town to go hide out for a while--Xander's mom, after putting on the show of a lifetime movie and going "on a break to Hawaii"

After Ryn approached Xander in the bar and said something that made him feel so drunk and psycho that he just fell, you know, right into their trap of actually going along with it--

After he reached for Maddie's hand on the boat and she looked at him with that abject pity... Xander decided he needed to find another way.

He went to Decker. He said, "Decker, look. You, Donna--maybe Helen you all travel. You all get out in the world. Sure, I go on a boat out into the ocean but at least I go out on the ocean. Maddie doesn't go anywhere. She won't leave town, and now, all this stuff with Ben--"

"Look," Decker said. He rubbed his forehead and his eyebrows and he was just stunning. "Your friend will figure it out for herself. As much as you want to just grab her and shake her and be like 'You've got to get out' you can't break the tank for her. You can't break her out of the facility. That's something she has to do for herself. And she might have her own timeline to do it." Decker shook his head and leaned back in the office chair / in the car /onto the uncomfortable wooden bench. He was exhausted. Donna and Helen had both pegged him and ridden his dick in ways he couldn't even begin to understand. "What about that guy who works with them at the mammal place--"

"Jerry?"

"Yeah, Jerry. Why doesn't he talk to Maddie about it--traveling. Getting the hell out of this mermaid town for good might not be happening but probably Jerry could at least talk about going fishing in Canada over the weekend or something. Make it sound normal."

"Maddie would hate that."

"Sure," Decker said. "Right, sure. But the concept. Jerry goes to Seattle for a few days, talks about how nice it was to take a flight up to Vancouver and just wander around, look at museums, see more people in a half hour than you'd see here inside a week--"

"I see what you're saying," Xander said. "Maybe Calvin and Janine--"

"I thought you wanted to leave them out of it."

"Out of what?'

Decker lowered his voice. "You know, the mermaid stuff."

"This isn't mermaid stuff," Xander said.

"Oh yeah," Decker said, "Then what is it?"

*

"Maddie," Ryn said.

"What Ryn?" Maddie said. 

"Ryn is sorry for hurting Ben."

"You didn't hurt him," Maddie said. She set down another plate of fish and watched as Ryn tried to navigate eating and conversation at the same time. Then Ryn looked at her with her big dilated eyes. 

"Ryn hurt Ben, Ben hurt Maddie."

"No, Ryn. Ben just--he's just attracted to you in this weird intense way. bell hooks calls it, refers to it as cathexis. He's just got tunnel-vision for you for some reason and the fact that you're in our bed, sleeping between us, kissing us both on the mouth. We never talked about any of that--and instead of sitting down and negotiating what's next he just wants to--well, I don't know what he wants to do. But he wants to do it with you, without me. And I don't--I can't trust him when he acts like that."

"Maddie doesn't trust Ben?"

"Not right now, Ryn, no. I don't."

Ryn had finished eating the fish on the plate and was panting a little bit. Maddie handed her a big cloth napkin.

"Ryn shouldn't have sung to Ben."

"Nothing you do makes Ben's behavior not wrong, Ryn. It doesn't work like that."

"Cathexis isn't love."

Helen opened the door and walked into the kitchen carrying a sack of fresh sardines and a bag of stone fruit, looking positively salacious. "That it isn't," she said. She put the sardines in the fridge and then thought better of it--a few on Ryn's plate, a few on the griddle. She gave Maddie a piece of fruit. "Talking about Ben?"

"How are things with Donna and Decker?" Maddie tried.

"Oh," Helen said, "I wouldn't worry about it."

"I wasn't worried," Maddie said. She smiled a little bit. Ryn meanwhile finishing off a sardine looked between the two of them, obviously confused.


End file.
